Introduction

Malaysia is well known as a country for its rich and cultural heritage (Lad,
2012). It is a place which boasts of a rich cultural heritage. There is a healthy mix of
various tribes such as the Malay, the Chinese and the Indians. The Malaysian
culture has also witnessed heavy influences from the other cultures as well. Malaysia
has been a potpourri of culture ever since before independence. Here, people
strongly believe in respecting each others culture and religion.

People can find a god mix of Malay, Chinese and Indian communities.
However, the Malay people are the majority as its cover more than half of the
population in Malaysia. As per the laws of the Malaysian Constitution, all Malays are
basically Muslims and one can get an idea of the traditional Malay culture especially
in the village areas. The Malaysian culture also includes the Chinese and they were
known to have adopted the Malaysian culture since the ancient days (Asean News
Network, 2011). With the practice of intermixed marriages there emerged a whole
new group where the males were called the Babas and the females were called the
Nyonyas. The Indians are also a major part of the Malaysian culture. They brought
their uniqueness culture to Malaysia hence making Malaysia a great country with
variety of cultures.
Accepting a multicultural environment can be inculcated among children
through their classrooms (Mehta, 2011). Schools especially classrooms are the best
and most important places to teach about cultures, as that is where children from
different cultures growing up and learn together. If they are exposed to multicultural
environment right from their primary schooling, it is easier for them to get along with
children from other cultures. It will also teach them the value of respecting other
cultures and religions. However, the responsibility of creating a culture friendly
classroom environment lies mainly in the hand of the teacher itself. It is important
that the teacher himself believes in a healthy multicultural environment which treats
everybody equally. This essay will further discuss on how teachers can create a
classroom environment that is culture friendly.


Make the classroom hospitable
Making the classroom hospitable refers to ideas of making the classroom to
be welcoming so that it will create sense of belonging among the students in the
classroom. Once, the students feel connected to their own classroom, they will
appreciate their own classroom hence it can create harmony among themselves.
Here teachers need to play their role to ensure that students feel the sense of
belonging. According to Rothstein-Fisch, (2003), teachers can support childrens
opportunities to share, while maintaining some examples of individual property in the
classroom. Nowadays, parents provide their children with enough stationaries for
them to use in the classroom. However, there are still some children who will not
have or bring theirs and they tend to borrow from others. What the teacher can do is
that teacher can create a drawer where teacher puts some materials and students
who want to use that item can just take it from the drawer. Before that, teacher
needs to instil responsibility amongst them so that they can make it as theirs. When
they share the same items together, they will learn to share things with others.
Rothstein-Fisch (2003) in his book also suggests some strategies to make the
classroom hospitable. First, teacher needs to select two classroom monitors rather
than one and allow them to work together. This is because when two or more people
working together, they are able to express and share their ideas to achieve certain
target (Fitzgerald, 2008). In the classroom situation, teacher needs to ensure that the
two monitors are from different races so that the one will not be dominating in the
classroom. Once the teacher has selected the monitors, teacher needs to give them
the authority to take in charge of their own classroom.
The teacher can also set the seating arrangements in the classroom where
students need to sit in small groups. Again, teacher needs to make sure that each
group consists of different races. This is to develop their interaction and
communication skills between people from different races where the students will
face in the real world. Basically, each race or culture has different perspective on
certain issues. This will make the group members to get benefit and to know the idea
of other cultures when one of them shares their ideas or thoughts. Besides, this will
allow them to work together to preview their homework, discussing possible
strategies for problems and assuring all group members understand the homework.
Avoid biasness in the teaching and learning materials
Prejudice and discrimination can be reflected unintentionally in our curriculum
and learning materials (UNESCO, 2011). This is the case that always happens in
Malaysia because it comprises of variety of cultures. For instance, Indians and
Chinese students might feel discriminated if a Malay teacher is teaching something
about Malays culture or religion. If our curriculum materials are inclusive of children
with different races and cultures, they will be more sensitive to these diversities and
circumstances. They also will be more relevant to childrens life and better at
facilitating learning, development and participation.
Equity in lesson design is therefore important for ensuring inclusiveness in the
classroom. In teaching and learning activity, teacher should include all children,
including those with diverse backgrounds and cultures. The teaching must be fair to
all students and does not focus on particular cultural group like Malay. This is to
avoid other cultural groups to feel offended during the lesson. Teacher should also
teach something that is relevant to the childrens learning needs as well as their way
of life. For example, teacher should focus on topics that are applicable in childrens
real world when they face the community outside from the school.
A teacher should also have a good instruction and assessment in the
teaching. Planning instruction and creating good assessment are at the heart of
teaching (Norsana, 2010). Today, teaching requires teachers to examine the
curriculum to ensure that the instruction, learning experiences, and assessment
activities are aligned with the standards. Two important instructional tasks are
identifying the content to teach and determining the performances expected from
students. What is taught in the classroom plays a primary role in determining student
achievement. In developing assessment strategy, the first step teachers need to
identify and examining the standard statement for content and skills. Second step is
determining the level of cognitive processing and the last step is choosing the
assessment strategy. To ensure suitability and fairness for all students, teachers
need to check the assessment strategy for its appropriateness and if there are racial
and gender biases (Bennet.C.I, 2007). All students should have an opportunity to
demonstrate what they know and can do. Assessment should be culturally and
linguistically appropriate, fair and bias-free.
Group work activities

In the classroom, teacher can give a project for students to be completed in
groups. However, teacher needs to ensure that students work with others and not
their close friends. It is obvious that a student will choose his or her friend when a
project or a group assignment is assigned to him or her. But what a teacher can do
is, instead of giving this option to the students, she or he can pair students coming
from different races. Even if they initially refrain or look hesitant in communicating
and approaching each other, soon they will get talking and will try to explain things to
each other (Boutte, Gloria, & Christine, 1992). This will definitely increase the
interaction and the understanding between the students. The teacher meanwhile
should observe how children are behaving and reacting and then make changes
accordingly to help them out.
Teachers can also put students work on the soft board at the back of the
classroom. This is to let students to feel proud about their masterpiece. When it is
pasted, the others can just look and find for information on certain things based on
what their friends have produced. This will also enhance students learning because
they might want to work harder in order to make their work to be pasted on the
board. Besides the information that they have produced, teacher can create or
provide some space for cultural information. With that, teacher can also ask each
pairs or group to look for materials like newspaper articles, magazines, source from
internet and paste those materials on the board. This will also promote independent
learning where students are the ones who are responsible in searching for materials
to be shared with their friends. Whenever they have free time, they can just look,
read and learn about others cultures as well.
Teacher learns about other cultures
As the first step to create a culture friendly environment, teachers should first
learn about different cultures (Fassett & Warren, 2011). Once they have understood
how people from different cultures behave, it will be easier for them to understand
what a child is trying to communicate. Also after teachers know how children are, he
or she will not get offended by their opinions and reactions. There are many areas
regarding cultures that teachers should know.
The first one is food. Everyone eats, but not everyone eats the same things,
and the differences in diet from one culture to the next can be very dramatic.
Teacher can let his or her students share their culture through food by inviting them
to talk about or share dishes typical in their countries. To do this, have a cultural food
fair or ask your students to prepare a national dish in a class presentation. If
everyone in class gets a little taste, even better, just keep in mind food allergies that
the students may have. The second one is clothing. Often another element of food or
special occasions is traditional dress. It is not unusual for students to bring some
pieces of formal or traditional dress when they come to school. By knowing these,
the students will have a good chance of having these clothing items at home.
Teacher can get the students to wear traditional clothing on a certain day or bring
picture of themselves or others in traditional dress. Encourage each person to
explain the significance of the different pieces, if any, and give an opportunity for
everyone in class to ask questions.
The next knowledge that a teacher should know is religion. Though religion is
not necessarily a national value, allowing the students to share their religious beliefs
and those that most members of their culture hold will also provide valuable
opportunities for your students to understand one another. With a spirit of open-
mindedness and acceptance, ask the students to share some religious practices or
beliefs and allow the rest of the class to discuss the issues that may arise from
the discussion. If everyone in your class can be tolerant of their classmates beliefs,
there is the potential for a very powerful and informative discussion on the topic of
religion, simply proceed with caution.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are many benefits associated with creating a culture
friendly environment in a classroom. It encourages cooperative social skills in
children, and creates the feeling and understanding of unity in diversity. It also helps
the children coming from different walks of life to feel comfortable with other children
and have a boosted self-esteem. All of this in turn only does well to the society on a
whole, as tomorrow these children are going to be the citizens of the world. Hence,
teachers are the one who hold the responsibility to develop cultural friendly
environment in the classroom.
References
Asean News Network. (2011). Retrieved 3 25, 2013, from Culture of Malaysia:
http://www.aseannewsnetwork.com/malaysia/culture.html
Bennet,C.I. (2007).Comprehensive Multicultural Education Theory and Practice(6
th

ed.)Indiana University Bloomington: Pearson Education.Inc

Boutte, Gloria S. & Christine M(1992). "Authentic Multicultural Activities: Avoiding
Pseudomulticulturalism." Childhood Education 68 : 140-44.
Fassett, J. T. Warren (2011). Cultural Relations: Relationship in Culture. In
Communication: A Critical/Cultural Introduction (pp. 146-147). United
Kingdom: SAGE Publications.
Fitzgerald, D. (2008). Working in an integrated way. In Working Together in
Children's Services (pp. 4-6). New York: Routledge.
Lad, K. (2012). Culture of Malaysia. Retrieved March 24, 2013, from World Culture
and Heritage: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/culture-of-malaysia.html
Mehta, F. (2011, June 10). Creating a Multicultural Classroom Environment.
Retrieved March 26, 2013, from Intercultural Communication:
http://www.buzzle.com/articles/creating-a-multicultural-classroom-
environment.html
Norsana, S. (2010). Muilticultural Education in Malaysian Perspective: Instruction
and Assessment. Johor: Unversity Technology of Malaysia.
Rothstein-Fisch, C. (2003). Bridging Cultures in Our Schools : New Approaches That
Work. In Readings for Bridging Cultures (pp. 17-20). USA: Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates.
UNESCO. (2011). Dealing with Diversity in the Classroom. In Creating Inclusive,
Learning-Friendly Classroom (pp. 9-10).


Reflection
Finally, this reflection shows that I have finished with the writing on how
teachers can create an environment in the classroom that is culture friendly. To be
honest, it was not an easy task to be completed. It is because it needs me to think
like a teacher even though I am still a trainee teacher. In a positive side, it teaches
me to be mentally prepared to the real situation in the school when I will be posted
as teachers. Besides, I need to think critically and used my own experience and
observation after four times of School Based Experience (SBE).
This task was quite difficult for me because I was not able to find lots of
sources regarding this topic. However, it does not stop me to continue on looking for
suitable literature especially from Malaysian context for this assignment. I looked for
sources from other countries and tried to make relation with Malaysian classroom.
The ideas of implementation are basically applicable in most of the classroom
situations except for the knowledge about their cultures and Malaysian cultures are
not the same. I also made some discussions with my friends regarding this
assignment
After finishing the assignment, I get some ideas on how to create classroom
environment that is culture friendly. I may apply this knowledge during the practicum
that is coming soon. From this assignment, I realized that there are many things
about classroom situation that I did not know. So, I need to make more reading and
research so that I can improve myself in becoming a future teacher.




Essay
Writing


Reflection